Always the critic
Nicholas Dromgoole was a dance critic for the Sunday Telegraph for over 30 years. He has written several plays and a compilation of episodes in theatre history. He was chair of the Institute of Choreology and has just finished a book on acting style and gesture.
Nicholas Dromgoole has a booming laugh that echoes a bygone age. They do not make laughs like it anymore. The source of his mirth on this occasion is his marriage to a former leading ballerina of the Royal Ballet, “I told her she was a fringe benefit of ballet criticism... that didn’t go down too well.”
Doubtless not the only benefit of a 33-year stint as a dance critic for the Sunday telegraph, where he outlasted many an arts editor. Driven by his innate passion for classical ballet, he joined the staff a few years after he moved to London in 1960.
It was a passion fed from infancy, “My parents were mad about ballet,” he says “I first went at about the age of six. It was Our Lady’s juggler with Harold Turner. Only afterwards did I realise that nobody had said anything. I was so engrossed that I hadn’t noticed anything, which is very revealing for a six-year old.”
Dromgoole says his fascination was heightened by his elders’ tales of a past golden age, “It’s a shame, but when I arrived in the world of ballet there had already been a golden age, there were already people looking down on me because I hadn’t been there, I hadn’t seen the great days of (Sergei) Diaghilev and I never saw Nijinsky dance.
“There are always old fogies around saying such and such was better, but there had been a golden age, when ballet was the avant-garde art. Where did the public first here about Picasso? The ballet. Where did the public first hear about Stravinsky? The ballet. It was leading all the developments in music and painting and this was already gone when I was interested in it.”
Despite missing out on Nijinsky and Diaghilev, Dromgoole believes he was privileged that another great era of dance coincided with the beginning of his career in criticism. “We had (Frederick) Ashton, who was a wonderful choreographer ... there was Macmillan who as in the next generation, there was Kranko who was quite outstanding in his way. There was a great mass of talent.”
The link between a vibrant period of ballet and talented choreography is inextricable he says, “If you look at the history of ballet, it tends to go up and down ... the peak is when there is a fabulous choreographer around and, likewise, the trough is when there is not.”
“Ballet was very popular in the 1770s and fabulously popular in the 1840s but that’s because you’ve a choreographer like Jules Perrot around, who did Giselle and made a stream of wonderful ballets. But who follows Perrot? Nobody. So ballet crashes... Its the luck of the draw.”
Dromgoole suggests ballet’s cyclical nature has precipitated a dearth of talent in the current scene, “Whom have we got today? You’ve got David Bintley at the Birmingham Royal Ballet and that’s about it.” And he says the problem is not confined to these shores, “I go to the Paris Opera a lot because it’s a wonderful company and they dance gorgeously. But what has plagued France all through my lifetime is that they have never had a worthwhile choreographer. But a choreographer is a rare animal.”
His intrinsic optimism convinces him the trend will hit a peak once more, but he feels the rise of American modern dance and inconsistent Arts Council funding could represent a graver long-term concern. “People who have been trained in ballet can acquire American modern dance very easily,” he says, citing artists such as Michael Clarke and the Ballet Boyz, “but people who have American modern dance can’t acquire ballet. However a choreographer wants a wide range of movement, he or she wants people who have been trained in both.”
Increased arts funding and an enduring public appreciation of all ages should signal promising times for the classical form. But, according to Dromgoole, money has been squandered, “Two million has just been spent on the Lambert training centre in New Cross, but what is the training? It is horrifyingly bad.”
Greg Norman - Gravitas magazine, April 2005
